I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.

There are many times when I think I would have rather died with my husband. It would have been pleasanter, simpler. But it would have been worse for the children and the family in general.

I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford.

I hope in my books I help children to see their strengths, and show them I have some idea of what they may occasionally be going through. Especially at tricky moments when it is easier to go back and evade things rather than go forwards and confront them.

I've never found it made the slightest difference being a woman - though there is a sort of feeling that as you get older you're not so interesting.

All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.